Well, it has been a while since I made a blog entry and it seems like so much stuff has happened since the 4th. I will have to spend some time and make some other posts related to these other ventures. Today I have hit a point where I am very happy with my desktop. It is the past few days that have been very hard to deal with. Lets go back to there. Last Thursday I decided to update my SVN version of KDE. Version 4.1 had just been released and I should have known that the trunk of the KDE SVN tree would be come very unstable. When I got into work on Friday I was welcomed by a black screen, no doubt a Plasma problem. In trying to debug the problem I inadvertently deleted my entire .kde directory. So then to fix that problem I rebooted with a boot disk, ran reiserfsck to recover the removed files (which was unsuccessfully by the way), and then finally rebooted back in the next morning. When I booted back in I found that my file system was just corrupted…….
What a deal, one small problem, to a slightly larger problem, to the problem of all problems. I was forced to do a reinstall. This took me since then to now to get what I wanted. A fresh gentoo install using the paludis package manager and an install of KDE trunk from SVN. What a beautiful system. It has been a long road to toll but I think that the end result is defiantly worth it. Here is a screenshot of my desktop.
Here…
What a nice looking system. I am very excited about what is coming from the KDE developers. I think that some of their ideas are wonderfull. In the screenshot above I have just a few plasmoids running, the analog clock and then three folderviews. Two of the folderviews (for my work) are on the left side of the screen while there is one spanning the bottom for my downloads. I am running compiz fusion which is handling all the nice effects. I know that kwin has its own but I think that compiz is just more polished. You will see that I have no friends in my Kopete window (a great app). I have the new firefox running with the iFox Graphite (version 3.0.1) theme running. The background I got from Deviant Art and is called Conquer the World.
The end result is that now I am back up and running. What a good feeling….
I felt it prudent to write up a post on my past weekend. My friends and I went to my parents house for the 4th of July, where we set off a lot of fireworks, and then proceeded to checkout the Current River on Saturday and Sunday. What a trip this has been. The 4th of July party happens every year at my house but I have missed of for like 4 years now due to my work in the Chicago area. While it sounds simple on the surface it gets quite complex when things are said and done. Clean this, clean that… Fix this, and then fix that…. The joy happens in the early afternoon of the 4th when I get to lounge around the pool and wait for people to arrive. BBQ, swimming, and fireworks consumed the rest of the evening. One of the main reasons for this post is so that other people can see the photos of the trip. I love to share you know. You can actually view the full resolution photos on the flickr site. I have placed a small slideshow of the photos here in the blog entry for convenance. It should be stated that the majority of these photos came from a friend of mine Pablo Palafox and his wife who were there and a lot more active with his camera that I was with mine. (Thanks guys)
The trip was wonderful. I have been to this river many times in the past and it seems that each time I go I have just as much fun if not more that I did before. The route that we took is shown below.
This trip had a lot of firsts for the people that went along. For some it was floating and for some it was camping. For me it was having a solo canoe. I have done it one time before in the past for like a mile, but this was different. I was going to have to do the entire trip this way, and sitting in the back not the middle. I must say that the experience was better than I thought. I got the hang of it pretty quick and only kind of ran into trouble at one spot in the river.
We found a lot of really cool stuff along the river. One of the coolest that I found was Merritt Rock Cave towards the end of the float (about 2 miles or so from Round Spring). The cave has basically walking passage, but it is all though water. The deepest that it got was probably knee to mid thigh on me and I am 5′10″. I was surprised to find a large amount of formations per foot on this cave. Some caves you go to and it is just a mud pit, but this one was good. If you do go down the current river make sure to stop here, but don’t touch the formations. Don’t forget the cavers motto, “Take nothing but pictures Leave nothing but footprints, Kill nothing but time.” We stopped at three springs along the route; Welch spring, Cave spring, and Pulltite spring. All of these spots were cool, on more than one level, the water coming out of the springs is very cold.
As you can see from the presented map we camped a little bit further than half way just past cave spring. This was a good place to camp and after a lot of effort was able to get enough firewood for the night. The challenge was finding the dry wood which required us to go though the woods a bit. One of my favorite things is the evening and morning fog on the river. You can see some of it in the pictures from above. All in all I must say it was a great trip. I really enjoyed everybodies company and I hope that we get a chance to do it again on a different river sometime in the future. You have to just love the Ozarks…..
Now, from time to time I see an article where a public figure decides to talk about science. I found a real nugget today when browsing the web. A blogger by the name of Copache, otherwise known as “The Seeker”, posted an entry related to the Higgs Boson from Rush Limbaugh. Now, I just don’t know what to say after reading the article from Rush, the article can be found here. To begin I should say that I am appalled. There are so many things wrong with his article it is hard to find out where to start. Lets begin with an easy one.
“By the way, it is this vast particle collider at the CERN research centre that they say could replace the Internet, with speeds so fast that you’ll be able to download a high definition movie, a two-hour high definition movie in three seconds.”
Ok, I am not really sure where this came from. Possibly he is spinning a small mis-understood side quote from somebody else, but really, this is bunk. You can’t run the internet with a particle accelerator. Now one of the main points from the article is related to the Higgs Boson, something that Rush obviously knows nothing about. He starts by explaining how we will find the particle:
“They’re going to use a particle accelerator and collider for it”
While this might be a true statement, I think that it is an attempt to trivialize the work that must be done. Sure, the community will be colliding protons on anti-protons at the Tevatron at Fermilab and protons on protons at the LHC in CERN, but we will be carefully looking at the results of these collisions for final state configurations consistent with the theory. It is an extremely difficult process in which a single analysis can take several years. I would just hate for people, namely the Rush Linbaugh followers who would be reading this to think that this process is easy.
Ok, now to the part that really ruffles my feathers (dont ask where the feathers came from).
“In other words, he’s looking for a “God particle.” He’s looking for a particle to prove God. Dr. Higgs, please, just look out the window. You see that tree? You see the grass? Whatever is outside your window, all of it, it’s God particles.”
If Rush Limbaugh had done his research, as he should since he is a public figure, he would know that the Higgs Particle was coined the “God Particle” not from Peter Higgs but from Leon Lederman. Leon Lederman published a book called “The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?”. Now Rush seems to think that this is related to religion and that we believe that by finding this particle we will prove the existence of god. There are a few things that are really wrong with this, well two that stand out. The first is that this is related to religion. It is not and I have found that he originally wanted to call it the “goddam” particle. Ok, even I think that is a little off and could be wrong but I will add that disclaimer to it. The second thing is that the search for the Higgs is a little bit different. The current work is to place limits on its possible mass, or masses if you are looking at the MSSM model. By looking hard enough in a particular region of mass space it is possible to state with some certainly that the Higgs particle is not there. So instead of discovering the Higgs particle we are working to disprove it, and then maybe we will find it |-). Ok, so away from that and back to what I really wanted this post to be about. What I hate to see is a public figure take something that he does not know anything about and then through jargon and industry terms around like he has been an integral component of the operation, as if he has any authority to do so.
So, Rush Limbaugh, I would like to first ask you to clarify your statements. It is obvious that we are not trying to prove the existence of God. That was never in the goals of any of the particle accelerator experimental complexes that I have been to. To say so would be preposterous. I would like for the public figures to make sure that they know what they are talking about before spouting something. I know that there are a number of people out there helping the cause, but I fear far more are hurting it. Rush Limbaugh has definitely reduced his credibility even more than it already was.
What was it that he does again… Ohh thats right, he just talks….
Ok, so I know that it has been a while since my last post (for those who are actually reading this blog, you know who you are). Several things have happened since I made my last post including yet another attempt at doing a rope walking practice session which included a transition from ascension to rappelling, a very vital skill to have. I will blog about that later. What I wanted to mention today is something that I find interesting and more than anything funny. As you may have read in popular news syndication sites the city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania has come up with the idea to place fake three dimensional paintings of speed bumps on the road. Now while this might seem like a good idea at the time, and will probably work in the short term. I have found that the human species is in fact intelligent, despite some evidence on the contrary, and will begin to associate these paintings with flat road surfaces. This becomes a repeat of the popular moral tale of the little boy who cried wolf. How long before somebody encounters a real speed bump but just assumes that it is flat road.
As an aside, lets check out the future of speed bumps. It seems that German inventors are working hard to keep all of our roads safe… |-)
A while back I finally got into using iTunes as my way to get music. While I had an iPod much earlier I had been able to successfully use Amarok to transfer music between my computer and the iPod. This of course meant that I had to use less than noble ways of acquiring the music files to begin with. The purchase of my iPhone (which I love and am addicted to) I made the transition. I find that using iTunes in conjunction with the apple devices that I have to be a pleasure and bordering on addictive. Here comes my grip and the real reason for this post. Numerous times I have gone to download (and purchase of course) a song and not been able to find it. After doing some research on these artists I find out that they oppose the use of iTunes. Now my friends know that I am no stranger to standing up to the “Man”, I run Linux and basically shun Microsoft products based only on principle. But lets look at what an artist would want. I would think that he would want his message and music spread to as many open ears that were possible. I understand that there are other download services, but, we all know that they all have their own different issues. I am taken aback that there are artists that would refuse to allow their music to be sold though iTunes.
I do realize that there are also a lot of copyright issues and the such along with a large variety of other things that complicate the whole situation. But look at the end result, I wanted a song, looked for legal ways to acquire that song and was left wanting. So until those artists (yes, that is you Bob Seger) finally allow their music to be sold on iTunes I will just have to listen to them on the radio. Come on people! It is 2008, I should not have to get in my car to get music anymore.
The world moves so fast on the internet. If you are not careful you can find yourself lost checking 4, 5, or even more web sites at a time to see what is new in the world. You wouldn’t want the world pass you by now would you. So, enter the News Aggregator. Many of the internet new sites, blogs, and even search engines offer what is called an RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and you can read up on it in Wikipedia for a detailed explanation. A news aggregator allows you to combine RSS feeds from many different sites at once allowing you to get a good overview of what has been added to the web sites that you frequent.
I have used several different native application aggregators in the past, one of my favorites under KDE in Linux was aKregator. I have recently fallen in love with Google Reader. This web application seems to have it all. Mimicking the wonderful GMail interface for RSS feeds. Below is an example screenshoot from my google reader screen. As you can see I can have everything categorized into nice sections for a great overview.
RSS feeds can be great for your work also. An example realted to me is the need to keep up on current publications and pre-prints in High Energy Physics. A site that people frequent to do this is the SPIRES system from SLAC. A nice feature of this system is built-in RSS feeds. So, if I would like to see what articles came out under the field code of HEP-EX then I can have a RSS feed just for that. Then I can go to the google reader and it will show me all new papers that I have not seen. What a great tool. There are many other features of google reader that I have not mentioned and are definitely worth exploring, but I will leave that up to you, where would the fun be if I told you about it ahead of time.
So if you find yourself browsing many different web sites, looking at the same stuff over and over, I suggest that you look into using a new aggregator such as google reader. You might be surprised at how handy it becomes.
It is easy to move though the day and the night without interaction. No illusion of being connected to the world around us. In a lifetime, a brief moment of solitude and loneliness dominate. It is then that something reaches out to you and pulls you back, and it is then you realize that you were never really gone, just drifting silently past whisping threads of interaction. Something pulls you full circle and makes you realize that everything is connected. Your actions, my actions, and the people outside of you and me all affect each other. I author a post on my blog which somebody uses to fix a problem or link to the next person. A comment here, a comment there… And then for me, an artist which I find on the internet. The music which is surprisingly full of feeling, something lyrics could not convey. This artist who could seem untouchable and separated by both physical and social boundaries I find is based right here in the wonderful town of Lawrence, KS. His music, connected to me through the finely woven threads of the internet help me to see how we are all connected. This artist has unknowingly reached out to me and pulled me back. When you walk down the street you see the person that walks past you. Which one of you are drifting silently. Each of us has the ability to reach out and pull somebody back. How will you do it? I leave you with the wonderful sounds of this artist, Ehren Starks.
So, from time to time I ask myself, “what can I blog about?” I mean I like to think that my day to day activities are interesting enough, but lets face it, sometimes you go through a rut. Well, I am definitely out of the rut as of last night. The following is what ensued…
[This story is 100% accurate and I have presented no names on purpose]
The lights had dimmed and the crowd had shuffled out, the evening was coming to a close. (it was like 1:00 in the morning) I had been at the bar working on my research for quite some time now when a girl stumbles in and sits down at the table next to me cycling though emotions like an out of control Rolodex. Out of these she seems like she is distressed the most. So I reach out to her to see if she is ok, to see if there is something I can do to help. In astonishment she grabs my hand and pulls me up dragging me to the bar insisting on buying me a drink. (of course I go if there was any question). I end up meandering back to the table where she joins me for a toast (I cant even remember what the toast was for). After a short amount of time passes she makes her way back to the bar looking for her keys, her wallet, and I think part of her sanity. 1:30 finally reads the clock… I should pack up and get out of the bar before they kick me out I realize. The bar keep has been trying to get rid of the girl for a while now and she just will not leave. As I approach the bar to take care of the meager tab I had acquired she barks out at me, “WHEre ARe YOU going.” Where I calmly responded, “Home, which is what you should do.” She reaches over and grabs a fist full of my shirt and pulls me down on top of her (Yhea, this could be in a crazy romance novel from the sounds of this sentence). To satisfy my curiosity as to what was going to happen next I feel her teeth sink into my cheek. Then it dawns on me, this girl is biting me! Then I realized that it hurt. I reached up a grabbed her face and pulled her chin down in an effort to pry free. Stepping back from her I make my way to the door replaying in my mind the events of the evening realizing at the same time that I think she broke my skin. I start my walk down the quite street and say to myself…
Well, we have received quite the amount of rain this year. Just yesterday my fathers house, which is down in Strafford, Mo. received 7 inches of rain in one day. Now, this is just unheard of in that area. I mean a storm that drops 3 inches during the whole storm is considered bad. Now, we all know that words will just not work here, so, I will include some pictures that my father took for me. (I love storms and was largely disappointed that I could not be there during this one. Yes I am crazy)
Ok, so one of the things that I like to pretend to do from time to time is cook. Now baking has never been an issue for me but cooking a real dinner is a chore for me. Well, I have decided to attempt a beef pot pie. This came from inspiration from my brothers girlfriend, Christina, who made a chicken pot pie for my grandmother. So, I scoured the internet for information and finally landed on the following recipe:
I must say that things went great. I did have to modify the instructions just a bit and instead of using one large pie crust I used small what seem to be 3″ pie pans that I found at Dillon’s. The following are a few pictures from my attempt.
These are really good…
Now you should notice that there are not vegies in there, and yes I do eat vegetables, just not many of them. I have included only beef (which was a diced tenderized sirloin) and potatoes which I had diced to about 1 to 1.5 cm dimensions. The one thing that I really found surprising (that I had never worked with) was the corn starch. Once I added this to the beef broth the magic happened. The mixture gelled just like it was supposed to! This was a fun dish to make (although long at just at 2.5 or 3 hours). I will definitly add this to my list of approved home cooked dinners.
